So this place showed up on a bunch of lists of places to go in Porto, and for good reason - but I…read morewas having trouble finding the hours, so I figured I'd just get there around noon once I was in Porto, and ask. Around noon, someone did show up briefly to post a sign out front saying they were going to be opening at 12:45 that day (I asked out of curiosity; sounds like it's *often* 12:30, but it's really mostly a "they'll open when they want to" kind of place.) I knew it'd be the sort of place that would fill up immediately, so I got back at 12:30. At least that day, it turns out they still had 1 table left after they sat everyone there before they opened - that last table got claimed at 1, 15 minutes later. It's not a large space, and word is out for good reason.
Given it's not a large space, it was also easy for them to have excellent service, which they did. You could tell they were all passionate about the place, and again, for good reason - it was great. Definitely one of the best meals we ate on that trip. Between the two of us, we tried:
Complimentary bread and olive oil.
One OMG fantastic, wonderful fish soup. The sort of soup you'd want to eat every day if you could.
Croquettes that were pretty good. Enjoyable enough, perfectly crispy, a little too salty. Not nearly as memorable as everything else.
The seafood rice stew for 2 - a description I always question ("for 2"), but true in this case. It was quite large - and great. Excellent shrimp, which I'm picky about. I'm even pickier about shellfish (clams, mussels, etc). I was expecting to give my wife most of them, but I did *not* do that. They really know how to get and cook the best seafood here. The rice at the top of the stew wasn't anything particular to mention - filling, though, and warming for the drizzly day it'd been that morning. The rice at the *bottom* of the stew, that'd been slowly cooking in hot stew the whole time, was *very good*. :D
Wine-wise, they have like a hundred bottles of wine by the whole bottom, some very expensive, some *surprisingly* reasonably priced, but we also didn't need a whole bottle of wine with lunch - by the glass, they just had one red and one white house wine (also solidly priced, though, for a place like this, 6 euros (Be way more than that in the US. I had the red with the stew - solid.) Also a handful of solid-looking ports by the glass, one of which I had with dessert, a reserva tawny for 6.50 euros.
After eating the stew, my wife tapped out. I was also pretty full, but I'd spent a lot of effort getting here and I was *gonna* have dessert, darn it. Had what was basically just a whole roasted stewed apple, cooked down until it turned to pudding. Super good. Went really well with a reserva tawny port. This place was great.
